To Send Astronauts to Mars, NASA Needs New Strategy: Report

[Buster's Uncle]

To Send Astronauts to Mars, NASA Needs New Strategy: Report
SPACE.com
By Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com  1 hour ago



An artist's illustration a manned NASA Orion space capsule in orbit around Mars, with two other vehicles nearby. A National Research Council report released June 4, 2014 found that Mars should be the ultimate goal for NASA's human spaceflight



Landing astronauts on Mars should continue to be the ultimate goal for the United States' human spaceflight program, but a change in NASA's approach and a significant boost in funding are needed to make it happen, a new report finds.

A manned mission to Mars, specifically the Martian surface, is the most distant and difficult goal for astronauts that is still feasibly attainable within the foreseeable future, according to the nearly 300-page report by the National Research Council's Committee on Human Spaceflight. The report, entitled "Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration," was released Wednesday (June 4).

The NRC committee found that in order to reach the Red Planet, NASA's current budget-driven, capability-based exploration strategy needs to be replaced by one that is guided forward by interim destinations, including possibly the moon. NASA is currently pursuing a path to Mars that omits a return to the lunar surface in favor of sending astronauts to a redirected asteroid by 2025, followed by sending a crew to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s.

"If a change of mind on the part of enough people — if enough sufficient leadership cannot be summoned — then we don't find Mars to be a realistic goal at all," said former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the committee's co-chairman and current president of Purdue University, in a public briefing Wednesday in Washington, D.C. "We're suggesting that the national leadership organize itself around a new approach that will make Mars, and other great achievements of exploration en route there, realistic in a way they are not presently."


NASA's Mars-bound path

In a response to the report, NASA officials agreed with the committee's identification of Mars as the ultimate goal.



A new report by the National Research Council’s Human Spaceflight Committee offers three different pathways to illustrate trade-offs among affordability, schedule, developmental risk and the frequency of missions


"NASA has made significant progress on many key elements that will be needed to reach Mars, and we continue on this path in collaboration with industry and other nations," space agency officials said in a statement. "We intend to thoroughly review the report and all of its recommendations."

Unlike previous reports that have sought to evaluate the path forward for U.S. space exploration and have ultimately recommended Mars as the goal, the research council's "Pathways to Exploration" focuses on making the goal obtainable, said Jonathan Lunine, the committee's other chairman and the director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University.

"Yes, the idea of Mars as the horizon goal is not new," Lunine said. "What's different about this report is that we're recommending an approach that will provide a robust way of getting to Mars in an endeavor that will take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars and, quite probably, human lives. It is the staying power of the pathways approach and its ability, essentially, to make the program resilient against changes that we think is a novel aspect of our report."

The report's broad perspective, taking into account such considerations as public opinion and the rationales for continued human spaceflight, also distinguishes this report from previous ones, Lunine said.

The committee found that no single rationale, either practical or aspirational, justified the further pursuit of human spaceflight. But if considered with the practical benefits, the aspirational rationales — including the survival of the human species through off-Earth settlement and the shared human desire to explore — could argue for it to continue, as long as the program adopts a stable and sustainable approach.



This NASA graphic shows the major steps required for sending a manned mission to Mars by the mid-2030s as outlined by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and the U.S. National Space Policy of 2010.


"So, in essence here, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it is the aggregate of the aspirational and the pragmatic that, in the committee's opinion, motivate human spaceflight and human space exploration," Lunine said at the hearing.


Pathways to Mars

The report offers three different pathways to illustrate the trade-offs among affordability, schedule, developmental risk and the frequency of missions for different sequences of intermediate destinations. All of the pathways culminate in landing on the surface of Mars and have anywhere between three and six steps that include some combination of human missions to the asteroids, the moon and Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos.

While the committee was not asked to recommend a particular pathway to pursue, it found that a return to extended operations on the surface of the moon would make significant contributions to a strategy ultimately aimed at landing people on Mars, and that it would also likely provide a broad array of opportunities for international and commercial cooperation.

The report also identified 10 high-priority capabilities that should be addressed by current research and development activities, with a particular emphasis on Mars entry, descent, and landing, radiation safety, and in-space propulsion and power. These three capabilities, the committee said, will be the most difficult to develop in terms of costs, schedule, technical challenges, and gaps between current and needed abilities.

"I hope [our report] carries the national conversation forward in the direction of realism — realism about public opinion, realism about risk, realism about cost and the incredibly daunting technical challenges of the horizon goal [of going to Mars] that we believe the world embraces," Daniels said.

"We're optimistic," he concluded. "We believe the public will support it; we believe the rationales justify it; we believe the achievement would be monumental if it occurred. But we believe there is one, and possibly only one, way to get there, and we've offered it up in this report."

To read the full "Pathways to Exploration" report, see the National Research Council's website: www.nas.edu/humanspaceflight.


http://news.yahoo.com/send-astronauts-mars-nasa-needs-strategy-report-210037533.html

[Buster's Uncle]

National Research Council Admits We'll Probably Never Live on Mars
The Atlantic Wire
By Connor Simpson  5 hours ago






Everyone wants to live on Mars in the future, but today the National Research Council politely points out we'll never, ever make it to Mars if we don't invest in space funding. Otherwise, we're stuck on this old garbage Earth forever.

The 286-page National Research Council report — mandated by Congress, prepared  by the Committee on Human Spaceflight over the last 18 months and funded for $3.2 million by NASA — concludes that continuing to fund space flight at current levels “is to invite failure, disillusionment, and the loss of the longstanding international perception that human spaceflight is something the United States does best,” according to report from the Washington Post. (Yikes. Tell us how you really feel, NRC.)

For some reason humans are obsessed with one day leaving our garbage planet behind and inhabiting (and eventually ruining) another garbage planet, and for a while everyone wanted that planet to be Mars, because it's close, and red is flattering on everyone. (Something about Mars "possibly being inhabitable," too, probably, according to my high school science textbook.) But now the National Research Council has effectively taken that idea behind the shed and put a fancy space bullet through its head, admitting we'll never make it to Mars at our current space research funding levels. We're stuck here. Mars has a cover charge, and humans have left our collective wallets at home. “Absent a very fundamental change in the nation’s way of doing business, it is not realistic to believe that we can achieve the consensus goal of reaching Mars,” committee co-chair and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told the Post.

So, that's a bummer. The committee did conclude that space travel, like international travel here on Earth, is unreasonably expensive but probably a necessary evil. Or as the Post puts it: "that the purely practical, economic benefits of human spaceflight do not justify the costs involved, but said that the aspirational nature of the endeavor may make it worth the effort."

The report isn't a total downer — it makes sure to outline reasonable steps NASA can take in the future to hopefully, someday make Mars inhabitance a reality, something the report called a "horizon goal" without determining how long it may take to reach that horizon. The report did not delve that far into the philosophical implications of space travel. Here, the report's suggestions:

Teaming up with the Chinese, currently seen as NASA's rivals instead of a potential teammate. (What is this, a Bad News Bears sequel?)

Establishing an inhabitable lunar base on the moon before proceeding to Mars so NASA can draw reasonable conclusions and develop necessary technologies before slingshotting humans to Mars.

The NRC acknowledged the Obama administration's current Armageddon-inspired plan to land on asteroid and then travel to Mars, could happen, theoretically. The NRC also acknowledged it's a terrible idea.

Congress is still reviewing NASA's 2015 budget proposal, so all is not lost. Maybe Congress will increase spending and fund NASA at an appropriate level to make space travel an attainable goal. (Unfortunately, the odds of that happening and me learning to fly are about the same.) But hey, NASA, perk up: maybe your super cool deep space parachute that you're forced to test on earth will actually work.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/06/national-research-council-admits-well-probably-never-live-on-mars/372157/


http://news.yahoo.com/national-research-council-admits-well-probably-never-live-193000830.html